Sunday night during Downton's season 3 finale, America learned that Mary's husband Matthew Crawley, as played by Dan Stevens – who asked to be released from the series for professional reasons – came to a bloody end by crashing his sports car only minutes after meeting his newborn son and heir.

Apparently, the new mother and widow will not be lonely for long. Series' writer-creator Julian Fellowes drops a strong hint to that effect in Monday's New York Times, telling its TV writer Dave Itzkoff: "We begin Series 4 six months later. We don't have to do funerals and all that stuff. That's all in the past by then."

And since this is a series with a strongly devoted following that does not care for spoilers – which immediately started crossing the Atlantic once episodes started airing in its native country last fall, ahead of America's January 2013 season premiere on PBS – Fellows acknowledges, "I would vastly prefer that we all saw it together. The world is much more global. And so I look forward to the day when it changes, as I'm sure it will."